The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge — Stephen Hawking #RIP

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

A blind, mechanical, unrecognisable orgy that no pen could ever suggest

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third works — Alan J. Perlis

Questions are easy, it is the answers that are hard

Perseverance, the secret of all triumphs — Victor Hugo

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission — Grace Hopper

Just because I disagree with you, does not mean I hate you. We need to relearn that in society.

A person is smart, people are stupid

Should I shut up now?

Could’a, would’a, should’a … that’s me

He is all of them. And he is one of us.

One of these days I’m gunna climb that mountain

Code is poetry

ASAP means As Soon As Possible, not Right &#^ing Now!

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is — Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

« Badger, Badger, Badger! »

I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I’m going to blame you.

The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence, but there is also always cow shit in the grass somewhere

Nobody notices what I do until I don’t do it

We are so creative that when we have no problems, we invent them. — Augusto Cury

You can never have enough of too much

Working on it …

In the end, you only regret the chances you didn’t take.

A person is smart, people are stupid. — Agent K

So dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time — Lyndon Johnson, on Ford

Quantity has a quality all of its own — Joseph Stalin

For all that they did, and for all they were never able to do, we remember. Lest We Forget

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? — Abraham Lincoln

They can’t even. They lose all ability to can.

« Beware the Dark Forest »

Society has become so fake that the truth actually bothers people.

Dumb as a bucket of rocks

Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine. — Bob Carter;

« A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP — Leonard Nimoy aka Spock »

In computer science, there are only two hard problems: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

Blatherings

Cloud failure

Jenolan 20 July 2024 1 Comment 1 1163

Yesterday the ‘cloud' stopped working apparently due to a software update. It was going to happen and will happen again in the future. Not always because of bad actors but because the things we humans make break from time to time, technology is not magic, it is built by humans and the ‘wonderful' AI stuff still comes from human minds it is definitely not perfection.

People think that the ‘cloud' is some amorphous entity, a super unit, you hear businesses and politicians talking about the cloud like it has a presence. The cloud? It is simply a bunch of interconnected computers sharing the workload of an organisation, at the base is the same sort of technology that you have at home reading this made up of CPU's, RAM, Hard/SSD disks which run on electricity and need cooling and connections to the internet in order to do ‘stuff'.

When this cloud myopia started I was still doing professional software work, I told the people I was working for that just putting everything into the cloud was not going to resolve age old computer issues like backing up data, having disaster recovery plans or simply what do we do when the #$%##$# thing stops working. That shops stopped working is annoying, that airports and aeroplanes were affected is alarming. People, even knowledgeable computer science and administrators, do not understand what it is they are building when they fall into the cloud rhetoric.

Important systems should not be cloud based, sure use the cloud for general access, informational use and other non-critical operations but if it is important to keeping the business open, flights in the air, power distribution running etc then it needs to run on a ‘real' system not farmed off to a blob of compute capacity that is run by another organisation because they can only provide the capacity cheaper and make a profit by scaling and saving on expenses, like competent people.

The more everything is placed into one bucket the more likely someone kicking it over is likely to cause tremendous chaos and carried forward loss of life when critical systems fail. We have been directed on a path, people without the skill and those only concerned with the almighty dollar are going to eventually run us into a proverbial brick wall.